For as long as I can remember, I’ve kept some form of journal or diary. In the 5th grade, I was determined to write a novel and somehow managed to produce 35 double-sided, hand-written pages of babble. I can’t recall now what I’d written about and whether it made any sense, but I remember distinctly how the crumpled pages felt in my hand. Half the fun was leafing through them over and over again so that I could feel their roughness, like worn paper money that would have been passed around in old, ancient markets. I loved that my words felt antique on those curled, greasy pieces of paper.
I didn’t know then how wonderfully I’d delight my future self with this journaling habit. Today, I can’t rummage through a shelf or box of things without finding a note, a receipt, a torn piece of paper with a little snippet of my history written inside. Just tonight, I leafed through a favourite paperback and out fell a business card from a cherished restaurant in Tel Aviv. I visited there 3 years ago. Flashbacks from that trip came wafting over me while I sat on the floor of my room. Masada. Jerusalem. The creamy feel of the water in the Dead Sea. Ripe fragrant guavas spilling from a cart on the street. Memories are like that.
I found half a dozen journals tonight. And as I leafed through each one, pieces of my younger self came to life. Shopping lists. Meeting minutes. Phone numbers. On one page, a mind map of the Gmail marketing plan for Romania (..600K, no, wait 200K mobile internet users, a goal of 50K new accounts…) and on the next page, a love letter I never sent.
I found a notebook of poems, of prayers, of gratitude. I found a book with a collection of French verbs (from a few years ago when I tried to re-learn the language). And a moleskin book of London, hardly written in (why?). Another journal decorated with stickers and quotes from a girl friend; it was a Christmas present. And a coil-bound book of lists.
All of them beautiful. But all unfinished.
An old favourite notebook, because it was small and soft covered and fit neatly in all of my purses, had only two blank pages left. The other hundred or so packed top to bottom in hand written words of mostly blue ink (I kept favourite pens, too). And yet somehow, the old me chose not to continue writing in it anymore. The last few sentences inside read: I am going to heal myself. I’m choosing now to let go of it all. It’s time to move on.
And another book, also unfinished, ends: And so, I wonder how this will all turn out. I am trying hard to live in the moment.
And another: I trust myself first because I know who I am now.
My heart breaks trying to remember the turmoil I must have been going through to have written such dramatic, all-encompassing words. And another part of me laughs because I know how the story ended and if I could just whisper in my old self’s ear, I would tell her Denise, I promise you, everything will be just fine.
Leafing through these books, there is a larger part of me who is proud. Proud of my old self for having the courage to walk away from an unfinished story so that she could start anew. Though I’m sure she didn’t know it then, the old Denise was trying her best to re-invent her destiny each time things didn’t seem to be going just right. Some of these notebooks are only a quarter used. Pages and pages of dead weight paper that will never feel the touch of a pen. Denise had to walk a different road, start on a fresh book of pages.
Reading through these old journals, I feel witness to the making of Me. So many unfinished stories, so many unclosed doors, so many possible endings. And beginnings.
